Access to Your Archive: Make It Easy, Make a Difference
Why digitize? This is the question many archive owners, collectors, and curators face. In an increasingly digital world, analog access to collections and archives is still the norm. But should it be? A Philosophical Question If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? […]
Everyone Who Has Gone Before Me: An Interview
by Andrea Glazer For those in my generation, much of our lives have been lived in a wholly digital world. Maybe that’s what makes the collections we work with so fascinating. Instead of being automatically dumped in digital buckets, every album, letter, and photo is curated to what’s most meaningful to the family it belongs […]
Don’t Lose Your History
Recorded history is an irreplaceable treasure, but physical historical records are constantly under threat. Books, records, photographs, and hand-written letters are meant to be passed on to future generations, but the more they’re used, the more likely they are to sustain irreversible damage. Over time, the valuable information recorded on paper can become indistinguishable from […]
The Magic of Digital Restoration . . . Hint: It’s Not Magic
by Shana Scott If you watch police procedurals like I do, then you’ve seen the most grainy and blurry photos and videos magically render themselves back together thanks to digital restoration. Like many things on TV, the reality of digital restoration doesn’t match. There are limits to what can be enhanced or restored using digital […]
Beyond Image Capture
In the realm of preservation, it’s essential that a digital file—a digital representation of the original object—accurately captures the current state of a physical object. The image file should effectively serve as a placeholder, an equivalent representation to the original object. That, along with secure storage and access, make up the field of digital preservation. […]
What Should I Digitize? 3 Ways to Decide
If you’ve uncovered a box of records or your organization just inherited a building full of community archives, how do you determine what should be digitized first? What can be deprioritized and why? Prioritizing the materials in your collection is no small challenge, especially for non-profits and institutions that value their history and mission. Trying […]
A Cat’s Mark on History from The Hill
What do you do when tragedy befalls a one-of-a-kind document? Accidents are bound to happen, but it’s devastating when they happen to rare materials. Birth certificates and diplomas can be reissued, but unique, antique, or otherwise precious pieces of history don’t always have a simple—or successful—solution when the worst happens. Kelienne “Kelli” M. Miriani-Ripple was […]
Having Trouble Digitizing Your Collection? Meet Your Solution!
What does your historical collection look like? Perhaps you have a box of bound manuscripts you’d like preserved for future generations, or maybe you have a library full of historic publications and loose papers that need organizing before you can even think about what the next steps are. The histories humans choose to save and […]
WWII Map Comes Home After 73 Years: Conservation and Digitization of a Soldier’s Legacy
[Above: Anderson Archival’s digitized copy of the map displayed on a monitor with the original conserved map laid out on the table below.] Working with historical documents means that Anderson Archival is privy to many valuable stories. The impact of these tales is often deeply personal as well as bearing a cultural impact. We recently […]
Quotables: Launching Your Legacy: How You Can Impact the Next Generation (Just Luxe)
Principal Farica Chang’s post in Just Luxe discusses the importance of conserving your legacy for the next generation. Whether that conservation is physical or done through digitization, ensure that family, community, and society members can access their history. Click here to read the full article! Do you have a historical document collection that you’d like […]
